A Team of Like Minded Individuals
by Lucillia
Summary: Thanks to an experiment with a Seal gone wrong, Naruto ended up in another world. Fortunately, he landed in good company. Literally.
1. Through the Rabbit Hole

When Naruto returned from his three year training trip with Jiraiya, there had been a reason that he hadn't been a Superninja who excelled in Seals and just about anything and everything else under the sun the way a student of a Sannin should, the way his father had despite not receiving nearly as much individualized training from the man. That reason for that had been because most of that three years that Naruto had spent away from Konoha hadn't actually been spent in Jiraiya's company. Most of that three years that had been earmarked for the training trip Jiraiya had been planning since Naruto was in diapers had in fact been spent somewhere else, somewhere where Naruto had been forced to learn how to survive without the ability to use his Chakra and the Ninjutsu that came with it.

Jiraiya had indeed taught Naruto how to draw out several tails of the Kyuubi's power as he had claimed, but that had been both early in the boy's training, and near the end of it after Naruto had been recovered by a mightily relieved Jiraiya who had been afraid that he might never see the boy again. Naruto had already used two tails of the Kyuubi's power by the time they had left Konoha, and rather rapidly learned to use more, much the way he had learned to use skills that usually took other ninja days, weeks, months and years to learn, in a much shorter amount of time, the Kage Bunshin, and the Rasengan being prime examples of this.

After Naruto had returned, he and Jiraiya had done a good job of covering up the fact that Naruto had spent five months training with him at the most, but from time to time after he returned people would look at him in askance over the fact that he hadn't learned more while he was away. Fortunately for their attempts at covering up Naruto's disappearance, most people had pinned Naruto's lack of skill and knowledge either on Jiraiya's supposed irresponsibility, or Naruto's supposed denseness and inability to pay attention for more than five minutes at a time.

The thing was, Naruto, who was a quick study when given the opportunity to learn in the manner he did best, which was by doing, had indeed learned a great deal while he was away. Unfortunately however, most of what he'd learned was useless in his own world. What use was English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian in a world that spoke none of those? What use had he of skills with handling firearms in a world where there were few or none? What use was knowing how to drive a car or fly a helicopter in a world that didn't have any for a variety of reasons including the fact that the local Daimyo who had been in power when the automobile had been invented or perhaps re-invented if the old legends were true had not wanted the countryside to be despoiled by a network of paved roads and highways and the other Daimyo across the continent had followed his lead?

Where was Naruto you ask?

In another world where he had met and eventually joined a group of people he found to be somewhat like minded to himself. A group of people who, much like him, fought for the oppressed against those who would take everything away from them just because they could either because they were stronger or better funded or merely greedy enough to have the balls to try. A group of mercenaries who still had hearts and principles, and weren't entirely motivated by money. A group who, much like him, tended to be so lucky when it came to escaping from trouble and not getting themselves killed that Luck could almost be listed as their super-power.

How did he get there you ask?

Well, shortly after the four tails incident, Jiraiya, who was still recovering and therefore unable to do anything that was too physical lest he overexert himself and aggravate his healing injuries, had decided to teach Naruto the Sealing arts, believing that, since the boy was an Uzumaki, he would be a natural at it. The boy who thought so far outside of the box that one would need a telescope to find the darn thing took to creating Seals a little too well, so well in fact that Jiraiya had forbidden him from attempting to make any again after he had managed to retrieve the boy after a couple of years of near constant effort, after the boy's first and only Sealing mistake.

The day Naruto had made his trip to another world had been pretty much business as usual for the group he would end up living with for two years and change. The unsuspecting team with whom Naruto would soon be staying had figured that they had gone far enough for the time being, and had stopped in a rest area just over the Oregon border in order to rest, eat, use the restroom, and monitor the news on a radio that Face had scammed from someone while they recovered from the day's events which had included a number of exceedingly narrow escapes from death. They'd collectively decided that they would make their way South and back to the van which had been left abandoned when Hannibal, Face, B.A., and Amy had been captured by the forces of the "Reverend" Martin James after they had rescued Sheila Rodgers from his clutches when they were reasonably certain that the National Guard had left the area.

The group sorely needed the rest they were getting at that moment, as the day had been a rather eventful one as was often the case when the A-Team had a mission. If it hadn't been for that former Hippie who'd decided to make a living as a farmer in order to support his hobby of making sculptures out of random junk, they would've most likely been dead by now rather than munching on hamburgers while they waited for it to be safe to retrieve the van and make their way back to Los Angeles. Well, all of them aside from Murdock, who had flown in to their rescue and been forced to leave the chopper he'd borrowed behind as they made their escape in one of Reverend James' Jeeps, that was. Actually, Hannibal, B.A., Face, and Amy would have been dead before Lunch if Reverend James hadn't herded them out of the gates of his compound and given them a symbolic and mostly useless head start before sending the Jeeps full of armed followers out after them rather than killing them on the spot. The head start which the team had been able to take advantage of through skill, planning, and a near impossible amount of extraordinarily good luck, and turn around on James and his followers whom they had subsequently defeated.

Hannibal almost felt sorry for the Reverend who had a rough road ahead of him. The man had kicked his habit and become clean, but had done so far too late to undo the damage he had caused while in the grip of his drug of choice. He would now be forced to live with the knowledge of the lives he'd destroyed, and pay for the choices he had made in madness while in the clutches of something that may yet prove more powerful than he. He had seen a number of men lose the battle against addiction over his lifetime, including an old friend, brother and former rival in love of his who had lost the battle with the bottle over the years since the woman they had both loved had died, and continued losing ground to it every day.

The group which consisted of a unit who, aside from Murdock, had been on the run together since Vietnam, and a young reporter who had recently joined them and proven to be more of an asset than a hinderance so far had been seated around a rest stop picnic table and in the middle of a meal that had consisted of the fast food that Murdock had purchased along with a ridiculous hat with antlers which he'd given to Amy when something truly bizarre happened. The air around the five of them started to swirl around in what almost seemed like a localized tornado, except for the fact that the funnel of said tornado which was picking up dust and their food wrappers was swirling upward from the ground rather than downward from the still clear sky, with the narrow end of the funnel stopping maybe thirty feet above their heads. As the group looked up into the previously perfectly clear sky in confusion, they saw a strange circular drawing that looked to have been made of red light appear and start rapidly spinning until it blurred to the point that it appeared to be a glowing red disc which then rose until it abruptly vanished altogether, leaving behind a dark tunnel in the sky above their table. Oddly enough, the bit of sky that could be seen through the end of the tunnel that had formed from nothingness above them was an unnatural shade of orange that almost looked like the sky at sunset but not.

As the group which had previously been frozen in shock and awe prepared to flee from this bizarre phenomenon before something bad happened, a face that was undoubtedly human peered down through the other end of the hole in the sky, looking down at them in confusion. The confusion turned to surprise and terror as the person to whom the face belonged apparently lost their balance and fell into the hole. About a second later, a teenage boy who couldn't have been older than thirteen or fourteen and may have been as young as eleven or twelve based on his height landed on the picnic table that the group had gotten up from and had been in the process of backing away from. An instant after the child who had turned his fall into something more controlled on the way down had landed, the mysterious magical portal that the boy had fallen through vanished as if it had never existed. The only evidence of it having not been a hallucination being the young blond boy dressed in orange and blue that had fallen through it who was yelling up at the sky in a foreign language.

It took a while, but the group eventually got over their shock when it became clear that there would be nothing else happening aside from more yelling from the boy who had not yet registered their presence, and Hannibal - who had picked up some Japanese during his tours in Korea and Vietnam - was almost overcome with the urge to grab a bar of soap when he finally processed what the boy who had fallen from the sky and landed on their lunch was saying.

"Well," Murdock said, breaking the group's silence before biting into the burger he'd snatched up from the table before he'd backed away from it. "You don't see that every day."

**Edited 8/4/12.**


	2. The Team and the Kid

It had been Murdock who was the team linguist as well as pilot since he was fluent in Vietnamese and Japanese, passable in Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and German, and had some knowledge of Russian who had first spoken to the boy who had fallen out of the sky. Hannibal, who understood maybe half of what the boy was saying, and most of that the inappropriate stuff, Face, who could get maybe one word in ten because how fast the boy was speaking, B.A., who knew only a smattering of Vietnamese as he'd forgotten most of what he'd learned in Vietnam over the last decade since then, the Spanish he'd picked up working with the local kids at the Center, and oddly enough Latin aside from English, and Amy who was only fluent in two languages English and Bad English but was studying Indonesian in hopes of getting the Jakarta assignment when the man who was currently posted there retired of course needed a translator, and that job had naturally fallen to the team Pilot, Genius, Lunatic, and Polyglot, Murdock who had also ended up being stuck with the task of attempting to calm the boy down when he'd freaked out after some hand gesture the kid had made about ten minutes into the conversation had not had the intended effect, and the boy's attempt at running up a tree had ended with him landing on his ass, since he was the only one who could effectively communicate with the kid.

It had also been Murdock who had noticed the boy's Japanese was somewhat off as well, as some of the words the boy spoke didn't exist in modern Japanese, and his accent was unfamiliar. That was only natural, since he was effectively the only person in the group who was familiar enough with the language to notice. Considering the fact that the kid who looked to be Eurasian in descent, with far more European than Asian in his ancestry, who had fully expected to be able to walk up the side of a tree, and do something that translated to "Shadow Clone" which was supposed to multiply him somehow had just fallen through what could have been a portal to another world, there was a logical explanation for the linguistic oddities.

What Murdock had gotten out of the boy before he'd freaked out when his copying technique had failed and his attempt at running up a tree had resulted in a bruised bottom was that his name was Uzumaki Naruto, he came from somewhere called Konoha which Murdock knew for a fact wasn't on any map he'd seen before, and that the boy was here completely by accident since the pretty swirling red drawing that had made the tunnel that the kid had fallen through hadn't been supposed to do that. When he'd asked the boy why he had created the drawing in the first place, the boy had explained that he'd been training to be a Ninja back in his world. After further explanation, an explanation which had ended when the boy's attempt at a demonstration of his skills had failed, Murdock learned that the boy already was a Ninja, and that he had been training for several reasons, amongst which was the hopes of being promoted to something that was apparently his world's equivalent of Special Forces.

Murdock and Hannibal, who had encountered child soldiers before, didn't doubt the odd looking boy's story all that much, and only really doubted the boy's stories about supernatural abilities. Based on the way the kid moved and how he'd lashed out at Murdock before Hannibal had taken a chance and called the boy to attention, giving Murdock the chance to get through to the boy and calm him down, it was obvious that he'd been trained in something. B.A., who'd had a bad experience with a kid back in 'Nam, looked grim and Amy, who was the most innocent and naïve member of the group, looked shocked when Murdock had translated the fact that the boy was in his native land's military. Face however had laughed at the idea that the boy in the slightly tattered orange and blue tracksuit who was sitting in front of them was a soldier, only to have a knife - which had been thrown by the boy who had recognized the tone of his laughter - whiz past his ear and embed itself in a nearby tree a second later. Face rather quickly quit laughing after that.

None of the group knew exactly what to do with the boy who had failed to vanish after a few hours, and who wasn't retrieved by his superior officer who supposedly had more knowledge of the "Seal" things that were responsible for the boy's presence here, and therefore could fix whatever had gone wrong. They couldn't just dump the kid off at the nearest Japanese Consulate since the boy wasn't exactly Japanese despite the fact that that was the only language he knew how to communicate in. They couldn't leave him with the police or something, as there was no telling what would happen to the kid if he were dumped into foster care or an orphanage. Child soldiers of just about any stripe didn't do too well in normal social situations, and generally needed specialized handling in order to learn how to properly cope with life after whatever war they were in was over. It was doubtful that anyone in the local Children's Services department would be equipped to provide the care the kid needed, or would know anyone who was equipped to do so.

Eventually, when it began to get dark, and a vortex which might return the child to where he had come from had failed to form, the team decided to bring the boy with them until they could figure out what to do with him. Leaving the kid here to fend for himself just wasn't right, and they figured that they would be able to come up with a viable plan for how to deal with the situation by the time they got back to Los Angeles. They couldn't hang around here, because how close the National Guard who had only recently left James' compound according to the radio was, and if their names ever got brought up...

It was quite possible that the vortex which had spat the boy out into their world was only a one-way trip anyways, and that the boy may never be able to return home even if another portal to his world were opened over the next few days. If the boy's stories about his abilities were true, the laws of physics in the world he came from weren't the same as they were here. If they left the boy behind to wait a few days to see if another portal would open, it would be just as bad as completely abandoning him, since there was no telling when the team would return to Oregon. Lynch had been circling around them more closely lately, and it was possible, unlikely but possible, that they could be caught between now and any potential return trips to Oregon. There was also no telling what would happen to the boy or what the boy himself would do if he learned he was stuck here for the rest of his life, and had nobody there to support him when he received that unpleasant revelation.

By the time they returned to the van with the boy in tow and fixed the tire which had been shot by Martin James' men, the National Guard had completely left the area, and the local Sheriff's department was investigating the remains of the Reverend James' compound, and herding up his remaining followers who'd made their way back after the National Guard's departure in order to either arrest them or send them home to their waiting and undoubtedly worrying families depending on what roles they had played in the man's cult. The blond boy with the strange tattoos on his cheeks, who had been rather amazed by the jeep and all of the other cars he'd spotted on the road on the way down since, in the world he came from, the only vehicles with a motor were trains which were exceedingly rare, boats, and other watercraft, fell asleep in the back of the van before they reached Yreka. It had been Hannibal who was both leader and father-figure to the team who had covered the boy with a blanket when he did so.

B.A. had glanced at the boy through the rear-view mirror several times on the journey South which had started the instant the van was road-worthy since they didn't want to be in the area longer than they had to. He had remained silent as generally was his wont, but it was clear to everyone that he was rather unhappy about the boy's situation. The man volunteered with kids who often came from a variety of troubled backgrounds on a regular basis, and could recognize the signs. He could see that, the whole child soldier issue aside, whatever home that kid came from, wherever it was, it had not been a happy one. The signs which had crossed the language barrier quite easily had all been there for anyone to spot if you knew how to look. The fact that the kid had trusted Murdock who was a crazy fool at the best of times so quickly and easily despite whatever training he had received which would teach him otherwise, and leaned into the man's touch when he had carded his fingers through the kid's hair in an attempt to get him to calm down after he'd flipped out was one of them. Kids normally didn't trust so quickly and let total strangers touch them like that, especially not with people like Murdock. The kids at the center had noticed that there was something off about Murdock who generally acted like a big kid himself the few times he'd visited, and had been appropriately leery.

That wasn't to say that Murdock would hurt the boy or any of the kids at the center for that matter. Murdock would sooner chew off his own arm, than knowingly harm a child. It was just that, a few years back, Murdock had forgotten where he was a few times, and there had been some...incidents. Murdock had gotten better since then, but there was always the fear that he could revert to how he had been in the old days when he'd first been locked up at the V.A. lurking in the back of his mind. That was one of the reasons he didn't tolerate the man's crazy talk the way Face and Hannibal did. It would be better and safer for everyone if Murdock were grounded in reality.

Face quietly whistled as he pulled a number of exceedingly sharp and deadly throwing stars out of a pocket in the inner lining of the heavy jacket which the boy had thrown over the back of his seat before going to sleep in the back, on top of the storage compartment where they kept their guns. He had found a number of useful weapons which would undoubtedly be deadly in the right or even wrong hands stashed in the orange and blue wide collared jacket's obvious pockets, and a couple pockets that weren't so obvious as well, including a length of some sort of highly flexible and very strong wire, and a couple more knives like the one the boy had thrown at him earlier. Based on the callouses on the kid's hands, the kid had had lots of practice with the weapons he was armed with, and if he had wanted it to, that knife the kid had thrown earlier would have taken his eye out rather than scraped his ear. Wherever this kid was from, they got them young and started them early.

And he'd thought his having been drafted when he was eighteen was bad...

Hannibal watched Amy Allen watch the boy sleep with an almost maternal expression on her face. As he did, he decided that he would have to convince the woman to take the boy in somehow. That would be the best solution for everyone. The team couldn't keep the boy with them since the only one of them who wasn't on the run from the law was Murdock, and Murdock couldn't keep the kid in his room at the V.A. since it wouldn't go over too well with the hospital staff. They couldn't just randomly dump the kid into the foster system which wouldn't know how to deal with him since A) he didn't speak English, and B) he had clearly been trained to effectively wield deadly weapons and use them in a combat situation, making him a danger to those around him should he feel threatened in any way. He and the team could help the kid and acclimatize him to normal society if he were with Allen. If Lynch didn't start bothering them again and force them to move again that was.

He'd seen enough in the way the boy moved and acted to know that the kid had been telling the truth about being a soldier of some sort. The way the boy had automatically responded when he'd taken a chance and rescued Murdock by ordering the boy to come to attention while he'd been in the process of flipping out had confirmed it for him beyond a doubt. The stance the boy had fallen into wasn't a copy of the one used by the American military or a child's impression of such, it was a different one that was apparently used by the military of his native land which had been drilled into him to the point that it was automatic.

While the boy was here in this world, likely permanently, it would be up to the team to deprogram the child as best they could, and acclimatize him to American society. As they had been in the military during a time of war and forced to return to normal society themselves, they were better suited to the task than some random shrink who had never seen the front lines, had never been captured and held in a prison camp, and had never run missions which had forced them to do things that were illegal, immoral, and likely to drive one mad if they stopped to think about it. That, and as they had seen where the kid had come from, they were more likely to believe him than whatever therapist would be given his case if he were dumped into the system, and the boy needed someone who believed him on his side in the days to come.

In another world, Jiraiya stared down at the bizarre array that Naruto had created, wondering exactly what it was, and exactly where it had sent the boy. He had studied it for hours after the boy had vanished when he had fallen through it, and had so far been unable to make heads or tails of it. When he had started teaching Naruto the Sealing arts, he hadn't expected the boy to mess with them in quite this manner. Naruto was exceedingly reckless and had a tendency to jump into things feet first despite the danger, but he hadn't expected the child to do something so foolish. He should have known though...

He would do anything and everything it took to get the kid back if it were at all possible, and not only because Tsunade, Shizune, Kakashi, and the young Chunin Umino Iruka would kill him for losing him. He himself would miss the kid while he was gone, and would constantly worry about the boy's safety wherever he was, even if where the kid was right now was the afterlife because the boy had somehow disintegrated himself.

Gods, he hoped that wasn't the case...

**Edited 8/5/12**

&!&!&!&!7

**Author's Note:** For those wondering about Murdock's language skills, over the course of the series, Murdock revealed he could read Chinese in The Maltese Cow, had sung German opera on multiple occasions and got by fine in East Germany in The Quarterback Sneak unlike Face who only knew a dirty joke in German, spoke to a Russian in Russian on at least one occasion, shown knowledge of Japanese, and proved his fluency in Vietnamese during the Fourth Season Finale. At least two of the A-Team could speak Spanish, or at least they could during the Pilot, and it was implied that the rest of the team was at least familiar with Vietnamese during the Fourth Season finale.


	3. In the City

**Author's note:** Unless otherwise specified, Naruto is speaking in his world's version of Japanese in this story. Now on with the story.

&!&!&!&

"Awesome!" Naruto yelled as he looked out the window at the front of the strange vehicle he was riding in in amazement when he awoke to find the vehicle traveling through the streets of a strange and crowded city, the likes of which he had never seen before in his - admittedly limited - travels.

During the ride he had mostly pretended to sleep through and had actually partially slept through, the wheeled conveyance that Murudaku-san had called a "kuruma" that was moved along a black paved road like a train on a track by a motor like on a boat had traveled South to a massive city, at a pace that would give even the fastest of ninja some trouble. The past twenty-four hours had been the strangest in his life, and this city which was so unlike Konoha or the Fire Country Capitol was the strangest thing he'd seen in this new world by far. Hopefully, the massive library that contained the collected knowledge of this world that Murudaku-san had told him about when he'd been talking him into traveling with his group would have enough on the sealing arts to help him figure out how to correct whatever mistake he'd made and get back home.

Ero-senin would undoubtedly be working on his end as well, and according to Murudaku-san, if a portal opened up where the one that had spat him out had been, it would undoubtedly make the news, and he would be able to get back before Ero-senin opened another one. If Murudaku-san who had admitted to living in a hospital was to be believed, he knew the secret to flying in this world, and could get him back to where he'd first appeared in this world in a couple of hours if Ero-senin ever turned up. Since he had seen a flying thing in the air that wasn't a bird and looked to be a large thing that was far away rather than a small thing that would otherwise be close enough to hit with a kunai before he'd left with the group, he had chosen to believe Murudaku-san despite the fact that he was crazy enough to need to be kept hospitalized. The fact that it appeared that they lowered the bar for permanent hospitalization in this world also helped in this as well.

He knew that leaving the area had most likely been exceedingly foolish, and that he probably should have stayed a while longer in case Jiraiya ended up opening a portal back home over the next couple of days, but as Murdoku-san had pointed out, this wasn't his home, he couldn't use Chakra or do Ninjutsu here to protect himself, and the customs here were different. If an adult had caught him hanging around the "Rest Stop" for more than a few hours, hitai-ate or no hitai-ate, they would call the local police, and he would be placed somewhere where he might not be able to learn what he'd done wrong with the seal he created, or be able to get to the where the portal would be if it ever opened again. Considering what had happened when he'd made the mistake of going out without his hitai-ate in that one town, he knew that that was a possible outcome. Being chased by that overly persistent truant officer had been downright embarrassing.

When he'd asked about possibly going to the local government for help, he'd been informed that people here would think he was crazy if he told them where he was really from, and lock him up in the hospital because of it. Considering the fact that he would have thought that someone claiming to be from another world was crazy if he encountered them back home before this had happened, he believed it. Being locked up in the hospital was one of the worst things that could ever happen to a ninja, especially since you had to quit being a ninja when you got out. He'd heard whispers and rumors about it happening to this or that ninja over the years, but he didn't know anyone who actually had been locked up in the hospital for any length of time. Back home, you had to be really bad off to be locked up in the hospital, like Orochimaru crazy or worse. Here, if Murudaku-san was to be believed, the threshold for being locked in the hospital was apparently much lower.

From what he'd seen of him so far, Murudaku-san wasn't violent, and didn't seem any crazier than Kakashi-sensei or Ero-senin, and while a bit hyper, he was nowhere near as nuts as Maito Gai. He was nice like the three of them were though. He'd even forgiven him for almost hurting him after he'd flipped out when he'd discovered that he couldn't use his Chakra and had thought that he and the group he was with might have had something to do with it, and had done his best to comfort him.

Yesterday, before he'd found himself in an unfamiliar world, had been like just about every other day he'd spent with Jiraiya while the man had recovered from what had happened when he'd lost control after he'd released four tails of the Kyuubi's power and nearly killed him. After Ero-senin had met with his local contacts in order to gather useful intel for Konoha, they had spent the rest of the morning focusing on Seals. They'd had lunch on the road, and then, they had spent the afternoon doing some training in order for Ero-senin to get back into shape, and him to keep in shape. That evening, as the sun had been going down, he had worked on the personal Seal project that he'd been working on independent of his studies.

He'd created the seal in hopes of finding Sasuke with it, but so far, no matter how much he'd tweaked it, it hadn't worked the way he had wanted it to. Yesterday evening, which had been mid-afternoon in this world, had been the first time he'd seen anything with the seal, and shortly afterward, while he was wondering who the random group he was looking down at instead of Sasuke was, the thing had sucked him in and dumped him into a strange world where he couldn't use his Chakra no matter how hard he tried despite the fact that he could still feel it.

The landing in this world had been somewhat painful, but not nearly as painful as it would have been if he hadn't been trained to survive such a fall and flipped in mid-air, landing on his feet rather than his head. Fortunately, he had ended up landing amongst a group of some rather nice if strange people. He knew he shouldn't be so trusting of people, especially after Mizuki and Kabuto, but the people here seemed to genuinely care about him, and were willing to help him until he found a way back home.

If he found a way back home.

When he'd first landed, he'd been dazed, confused, exceedingly upset, and had thought he'd landed in another country, which meant that he would have had to run around for a few days in order to find Ero-Senin, which would have been annoying and inconvenient. Then, Murudaku-san had introduced himself and asked him what had happened. It had been while he had been explaining to Murudaku-san what a Ninja was since the man had never seen one before that his Kage Bunshin Jutsu had failed to work for him. Over the past year that he'd been a ninja, nothing like this had happened to him before. After the Kage Bunshin had failed a second time even though he'd carefully drawn up his Chakra and done the handseal perfectly, he had tried the tree-walking exercise only to find that his Chakra had failed him there as well.

He'd rather understandably been upset, and had lashed out at the first person he could think of, which happened to be Murudaku-san who had been speaking for the group since he was the only one who was fluent in his language, since it was similar to one that was spoken in a country in this world. Before he could seriously harm Murudaku-san, the white haired man with eyes like his had barked out an order that he'd been trained to automatically obey back at the Academy, and before he'd even realized what he'd done, he found himself standing at attention. He'd have to fix that problem later before an enemy spotted it and exploited it. Afterward, despite the fact that he'd tried to hurt him, Murudaku-san had done everything that he could to calm him down, and had been very nice to him. He'd even done that thing where he'd played with his hair like the Old Man used to do back when he was little when he'd started shaking when he realized it was possible that he'd never get back home when the sun had set and Ero-senin had failed to correct whatever mistake he'd made and not shown up to retrieve him.

It had been when Murudaku-san had carefully explained that he was in a different world from the one he'd lived in all his life, and that they didn't use Chakra here the same way that he did back home that he understood why his Chakra had failed him for the first time. Murdoku-san had heard about some things that were similar to his Chakra when he'd been in the region where the people who spoke his language lived, and had been reasonably certain that there would be some books on the subject at the library in the city where he lived since there were books on just about everything from everywhere there because it was one of the world's major cities.

They had waited until after this world's sunset for Ero-senin to fix the seal on his end just in case, but nothing had happened, and he'd ended up leaving with the group because they couldn't wait with him any longer, and they had decided that they couldn't leave him behind because he had no food, no money, and couldn't speak the local language, and there were very few if any around here who could. He'd tried to convince them that he'd be fine on his own, and that he could hunt for food if he needed to, but Murudaku-san had pointed out that he didn't know the local laws and customs, such as the fact that you needed a hunting or a fishing license in order to hunt or fish without being hassled by the local police. Where Murdoku-san and his friends lived was less than a day away from where he'd landed, so if Jiraiya ever managed to fix the seal, he could get him here and therefore back home in less than a day the usual way for this world, and even quicker by flying machine.

He knew that leaving with them was a stupid thing to do and it was possible that he was being tricked and captured, but these people genuinely seemed to be concerned about him, and they looked at him the way some of the nice people in other towns he and Ero-senin had stayed in had, rather than the way most of the people back home did. If he was stuck here for a long time or forever, it would be better to be with people who cared about him and were willing to help him. There was no guarantee that the next group of people he met would be as nice, and Murudaku-san had said as much, and more when he'd told him about this world and life in it.

It had been when he'd seen the "Kuruma" thing, he'd finally been fully convinced that he really was in a completely different world. There was nothing like this back home. The kuruma thing was powered by something that sounded like a boat engine, and it traveled on a strange black road on which a number of other kuruma things also traveled. They had used the kuruma thing to get to an isolated area where a larger enclosed black kuruma with a diagonal red stripe which had a broken wheel was waiting.

Eventually, they got the large black kuruma fixed and started traveling towards the city in which Murudaku-san and his friends lived. A city in which there would be a library where, hopefully, he would find a book that would tell him what he'd done wrong this time so he could go home. Even though he'd considered the possibility of it happening, he couldn't imagine not being able to go home ever again. He'd miss everybody terribly, and he still had to fulfill his promise to Sakura and free Sasuke from that Orochimaru jerk's clutches and bring him back home.

He'd sworn that he'd never go back on his promises.

Murdock winced slightly as he took one last look at the blond kid who had practically landed in their laps as B.A. dropped him off back at the V.A. since his 48 hour pass was up. He hadn't liked being less than completely honest with the boy, but coming and staying with them until they could get him set up somewhere was better for the kid than whatever would happen to him in the world he'd left behind, if he was even able to return. From what he'd heard from the boy as he'd tried to comfort him, the kid would be extremely lucky to see twenty in his home world. He'd been exceedingly lucky to have seen thirteen if even half of what he had said in an attempt to convince him that he would be fine on his own was true.

Hannibal and B.A. both seemed to agree with him that the boy would be better off here as well. At least here, the kid had a shot at life, and could be just about anything he wanted, if the papers Face said his contact could make for him were good enough.

Amy sighed a half hour later when they pulled into her apartment complex's parking garage. She didn't know exactly how she'd been roped into this, but she had been persuaded to let Naruto stay at her place. Despite the fact that she'd agreed, she still had some serious reservations about doing so. It wasn't like the kid seemed to be a bad kid, but she didn't know him, she didn't speak his language, and she'd seen the worried looks the team had been giving the boy and each-other. She'd heard some stories about child soldiers that worried her as well.

The boy whose name was Naruto would most likely be stuck with her for the long haul. If the person who had been teaching the child those Seal things that had caused him to land in their world and was presumably an expert at them couldn't fix what the kid had done wrong in four hours, there was a chance that he would never be able to fix whatever had gone wrong, and the longer it took, the more likely it became that it wouldn't or couldn't be fixed from either end. There had been no reports of similar phenomena to the one she and the rest of the team had witnessed occurring at the rest stop they'd been at as they'd listened to the radio overnight. All of the news in that area had been focused on the fact that the National Guard had invaded a small and sleepy Northern California town, arrested Martin James' cult, and freed a number of young people they'd been holding hostage, ending his reign of terror in the region.

As she let the kid into her apartment, she hoped and prayed that the kid knew how to use a toilet and a bath. Things would be rather awkward otherwise. They were awkward enough already, considering the fact that she didn't know a word of Japanese. Using a bunch of sweeping hand gestures, she'd led the boy who had rather politely taken his odd sandals off at the door on a tour through her apartment before heading towards the linen cupboard in order to fetch sheets and a blanket to lay out on the couch which would be the boy's bed for the time being.

It had been while she'd gone into the kitchen in order to get herself a drink that she found herself wondering exactly what the kid who had missed dinner and breakfast, and had come from a world which could be populated by any number of odd creatures, and cultures that were alien to her ate.

**Edited 8/5/12**


	4. Ramen!

Amy had ended up bringing Naruto to the grocery store with her since she didn't know what else to do with him, as she was afraid he would either get into or cause some sort of trouble if she left him alone in her apartment. Fortunately, the boy had seemed to know what a toilet was when she'd showed him the bathroom, so that was one less thing she had to worry about when it came to the child that Hannibal and the others had foisted off onto her. The way he'd made a face at the shower and refused to step inside the bathroom though showed that there was cultural line somewhere that the room somehow crossed.

She added studying Japanese customs to the list of things she would need to do in the very near future on the off chance that the boy had been raised in a similar culture as well as having been raised using a similar language. She'd heard something about taking one's shoes off upon entering a home being something Japanese people did, and that was something that the boy Had done the instant he'd entered her apartment.

The boy had been rather curious about her car when he'd seen it, and excited about the ride to the store despite the fact that he'd spent more than twelve hours in the van on the way down here. That was probably because the boy had spent most of that van ride sleeping, and had woken up once somewhere outside of Modesto before rather quickly getting bored with the scenery and going back to sleep. Aside from the fact that the boy had bounced in his seat and played around with the power window and power locks on her car the way a small child would, the ride to the grocery store was rather uneventful.

When she got to the store, she did her best to keep an eye on the boy because Murdock had warned her that one of the meanings of the Japanese word "Shinobi" was theft, which was something Ninja did. Naruto however seemed to content himself with running around the clean and highly modern supermarket she shopped at, excitedly examining everything and chattering away in Japanese. If he'd stolen anything, she hadn't seen him do it. As Naruto flitted about like an over-sized hummingbird, making excited comments about anything and everything that had caught his eye, an old Asian man who had been shopping in the store looked at the kid in surprise before he snapped something at the boy which had quieted him down for the roughly two minutes after the man had subsequently snubbed the boy who had tried talking to him, and before the kid had gotten to the canned soup aisle and spotted the instant noodles. What he did when he spotted them was slightly bizarre. After bypassing the Top Ramen packets, he'd examined the exteriors of the Cup 'O Noodles cups as if he were looking for something before picking one of the styrofoam cups up off the shelf and turning it around in his hands several times, after which he lightly sniffed the cup that he'd picked up to examine more closely.

There was a earsplittingly loud cry of "RAMEN!", and before she knew it, the shopping cart into which she'd heaved a ten pound bag of rice and little else since she'd been too busy trying to keep an eye on the boy who'd been racing around the store while simultaneously running her mind over a list of anything she'd heard of having been served in Japan was filled with Cup 'O Noodles cups in all available flavors. She was rather certain that a diet that consisted entirely of instant noodles wasn't healthy, but it looked like it had made the boy who had been torn from all that he knew and flung into an alien world happy, so she scooped about half of the cups out of the cart, and kept the rest. She would have to introduce the boy to healthier foods soon though.

Eventually, the slightly nerve-wracking and somewhat expensive shopping trip was over, and they made their way back to her apartment where the boy shot through the door and started excitedly putting everything away. The instant everything was away in its respective cupboards with a number of Cup 'O Noodles cups that hadn't fit anywhere stacked on the counter, the boy had rather eagerly filled her teakettle with water and set it on the stove which he knew how to work to boil. As the water heated up, the boy frantically searched the kitchen for something before snatching the pair of chopsticks that had come with an order of Chinese food she'd eaten with Murdock after his last escape from the hospital the week before out of her pen cup where Murdock had presumably set them with a victorious cry.

Considering the fact that the boy had completely ignored the utensils in the utensil drawer that he had opened and closed in his search for the chopsticks which he was now cleaning in the sink, she would have to make a note to get more chopsticks later.

Naruto impatiently wiggled in his seat as he waited for his ramen to be ready. He'd always hated the three-minute wait which was apparently the same here as it was back home. This three-minute wait here though was agonizing because there were a number of worries attached. This ramen was from another world and was therefore unfamiliar. Would it be the same as the instant ramen back home? If not, would it even taste okay?

It was better to think about the ramen, and how he had to wait for it to be ready than other things. If he stopped to think, things would become overwhelming. Right now, he had something to focus on other than the subjects that would otherwise drive him mad, which was good. If he focused entirely on the ramen that was sitting on the table before him, that almost insanity inducing feeling of knowing his Chakra was there but that he couldn't use it for much faded into the background. He could feel the Chakra circulating through him as he had learned to do back at the Academy and again during one of the lessons Kakashi-sensei had given Team 7, but so far, he couldn't make it do anything really aside from boosting his reflexes a bit, but not enough to do say a Shunshin for instance, and he could feel it replenishing his stamina to a degree that wasn't quite at his normal level. No matter how hard he tried though, he couldn't do a Jutsu or water or tree walk to save his life, and that was distressing.

Was this how Lee felt?

Aargh, he wasn't going to focus on that. He was going to focus on his ramen, his lovely, tasty, otherworldly ramen which would be ready in two minutes. He wouldn't focus on the Chakra problem, he wouldn't focus on the fact that he may be stuck in this strange world where only Murudaku-san and random old people in markets that refused to talk to him understood him forever. The place where Murudaku-san had said he would stay for a while until either he himself or Ero-senin found a way to get him back home both was and wasn't strange, and it was the not-strangeness that bothered him the most, since it was the not-strangeness that made him almost feel as if if he just found the right direction to run in, he would find Ero-senin impatiently waiting for him, even though that wasn't the case. The Eimi lady's home was clearly an apartment, and much larger than his apartment, and it seemed normal enough, except in one area. In what the Eimi lady said was the "bathroom", what was obviously the bath and the toilet were in the same room which was just gross, and the woman had walked in there without toilet slippers. In fact, there were no toilet slippers. Now that he thought about it, Eimi Aren-san didn't take her shoes off when she came into the apartment either.

Weird.

Weird, and slightly gross.

No time to think about that! It was time for ramen, and his stomach was all grumbly and whatnot. That could either be because he'd missed a couple of meals, or because the Kyuubi had been going nuts since he'd arrived in this world.

He wouldn't think about that either.

He took a hesitant bite of the ramen that was sitting before him on the table. It was okay for instant, but it wasn't the best. He started eagerly chowing down.

"That was good." he said to the woman who had watched him eat in shock, apparently surprised at how fast he could put away ramen, much like a couple of the poor suckers he'd duped into buying him lunch at the Ichiraku Ramen stand had been. Iruka-sensei had learned his lesson the first time, and had never let him get all he could eat on his dime again. He had nothing on Kakashi-sensei when it came to speed-eating though. That man could down an entire super-sized bowl of Ichiraku ramen in the amount of time it took to blink.

Again, he got a look of blank incomprehension in response to what he'd said. According to Murudaku-san, that was to be expected since, in this world, most of the people who spoke his language lived in a small island country that was across the ocean, and almost everyone who lived in the place he'd found himself in spoke something called "Eigo". He did these little tests though, to be sure, just like how he'd pretended to be asleep during most of the trip down to the city in which Murudaku-san and his friends lived to see how they would behave around him if they thought he wasn't aware of what they were doing. When they didn't try to hurt him and had spent most of the trip just sitting there and talking to each-other in that Eigo language while Feisu-san inexpertly toyed with the weapons he'd found in his jacket instead, he'd deemed it safe enough to actually fall asleep for a few hours since he didn't know when he'd get another chance to do so. He'd been taught to always eat when he could and sleep when he could because there were no guarantees that he would be able to later.

There was something a little strange about the group of people he'd found himself with. Aside from Eimi-san who was clearly a civilian, they both were and weren't like civilians. They moved wrong for civilians, but they also clearly didn't know how to properly handle weapons if Feisu-san and Han'nibaru-san's almost careless handling of his weapons was any indication. One of the things that clearly marked Eimi-san's friends as not-civilians despite the fact that they didn't move or act quite like Ninjas or former Ninjas had been how the one who led the group had gotten him to follow one of his orders. The way the man had called him to attention had been in the same authoritative manner that demanded instant obedience that the Instructors back at the Academy used, especially when they wanted to stop a spar that was getting out of hand, and he'd automatically responded the way he would have back at the Academy. It was a good thing that Han'nibaru-san hadn't wanted to hurt him then. If someone tried that trick on him on the battlefield, it could have proven deadly.

After Murudaku-san had been dropped off at the hospital where he'd been grabbed and dragged inside by a couple of burly medics, he had tried holding a conversation with someone else. Eimi-san and Bi-Ei-san had looked at him in incomprehension like Eimi-san was now. Han'nibaru-san and Feisu-san hadn't given him that look, but Feisu-san had asked him to slow down a number of times and given one word replies to his questions. Han'nibaru-san's replies were longer, but it was clear that he didn't understand him all that well either.

When he'd asked where the two men had learned some of his language, they'd given him two different answers. Han'nibaru-san had said Chousen, and Feisu-san had said something he couldn't remember or pronounce that had started with a sound similar to "Bi". Since he didn't have a map of the strange world he'd found himself in, he couldn't tell if they were talking about two different countries that might be near "Japan" as it was called in Eigo or being dishonest about where they had learned what little of his language they knew. Like Murudaku-san, they seemed to be honest, but some of the non-verbal cues weren't there. That could be accounted for by the difference in worlds however.

Eventually, he and Eimi-san had been dropped off at her apartment where he had learned several new words in Eigo, and had been brought to an ultra-modern market where there was old people who understood him and didn't speak to him other than to yell at him for bothering them, and ramen.

At least there was something right in this world. Where there was ramen, there were sure to be other good things. He would just have to find them.

In another world, Uchiha Itachi and Hoshigaki Kisame impatiently rested in trees that were close to a main road which ran North to South through Hot Water Country. They'd been there for hours, and despite the reliable intelligence they'd received which had given them the impression that their target would have passed through here well before now, their target had so far failed to arrive in order to be ambushed.

"How much longer?" an exceedingly bored Kisame who was feeling an increasingly pressing need to take a leak asked, daring to speak because the road was completely empty for miles in either direction, as was usually the case at this point in the afternoon.

"Another day." came the quiet reply from Itachi who was just as bored as Kisame, yet not letting it show. He'd never liked stakeouts.

Meanwhile, several miles away and completely unaware of the trap that had been rather impatiently waiting for him and his student, a rather bleary eyed Jiraiya sat scratching notes on a pad that was usually reserved for "research" as he had done for the last twenty-odd hours, still having made no progress in making heads or tails of his student's experimental seal.

**Edited 8/5/12.**


	5. Boredom and Its Consequences

Naruto sighed as he rolled over after shutting off the television. He'd had one back in his apartment in Konoha that got about half as many channels as this one did, but he'd rarely watched it because he either didn't have the time because of missions and training, or because he couldn't sit still long enough to watch the shows that came in on his old black and white set in the evening. The "Ninja" shows which were undoubtedly targeted towards civilians that came on in the evenings after most people got off work always got the strangest stuff wrong, and he'd never made it through half of one of them without shutting off the t.v. before he gave in to the urge to throw a kunai through the screen. About the only times he ever really watched the darn thing back home had been every Doyobi morning when all the interesting cartoons came on, every year on Founding Day for that neat movie about the Shodai and Nidaime Hokages and the founding of Konoha, and on the Old Man's birthday when they ran that show about his life. One of the reasons he'd watched the show about the Old Man's life despite the fact that the narrator was boring was because he'd seen a baby picture of himself in one of the images of the Old Man's second term in office during that show.

What was on t.v. here during the day was just as boring as the evening programming back home which was all he had time to watch during the usual work week. Worse actually, since he couldn't understand any of it because almost all of the shows that came on were in either one of what sounded like two different yet similar languages, and he didn't understand either of them. The most interesting thing he'd seen on Eimi-san's television had been a show with a kuruma chase which had looked somewhat exciting. Eimi-san had turned the t.v. off in the middle of it, and he hadn't found anything like it since.

Despite the trips that had been made out into the world to pick up clothing and a couple of other things that Eimi-san seemed to think were necessities for him, and to the roof of the building to train since there wasn't any other open space nearby that was large enough for his needs, the last three days had been boring, which was somewhat surprising to him considering. There was no real fear or excitement to keep him occupied since things had begun settling into a new albeit unusual routine, and there had been nobody to talk to since there was nobody who understood him. Despite the fact that he was reasonably certain he'd picked up a few more words of Eigo, there was no real cause to use them, since there really wasn't anyone to use them with, because after she'd gotten used to his presence, Eimi-san had completely occupied herself with something else in a manner which reminded him of someone who had gotten really behind on their work and was racing to finish it before the boss noticed how behind they were and fired them, and Eimi-san hadn't received any visitors while he was here. Since there was no news on the seal front, and Eimi-san hadn't brought him to the library because she didn't understand what he had been asking her for every time he saw her, about the only real excitement he'd gotten aside from the time he'd nearly fallen off of the roof which would have been bad since he couldn't use Chakra to slow or stop his fall had been when he'd had to put the toilet slippers he'd gotten at that place where they'd gotten his new clothes back in the "bathroom" because Eimi-san had moved them next to his sandals and the new shoes that Eimi-san had bought for him for some strange reason.

The period of forced inactivity he was going through had caused him to be left alone with only his thoughts for company over the past few days, and he hated when that happened, because it was never fun when it did. Especially when there was nothing left but bad things to think about, like the fact that he was virtually trapped in Eimi-san's apartment building, and that he was unable to use his Chakra for Ninjutsu and what little Genjutsu he knew no matter how hard he tried. Despite the fact that he was surrounded by people, there was nobody for him to talk to in order to ease his worries and tame the dark thoughts that ran rampant through his mind despite his best efforts to suppress them like he usually did. He hated not having anyone to talk to. He hated being alone and ignored. Aside from the lack of glares from total strangers, it was starting to feel like home when the Old Man was too busy to see him back before he'd met Iruka-sensei, Chouji, Shikarmaru, and Kiba and the rest of his precious people who had come along after them.

There was pretty much only one person in this world that he knew for a fact that he could talk to, and that person was currently locked up in a hospital somewhere. Fortunately, Murudaku-san wasn't completely unreachable, because he'd passed the Academy class and later lessons on finding his way to and from someplace he'd been by using distinct landmarks. All he had to do was hoof it through completely unfamiliar territory in a city that was located in an alien world using landmarks that he'd barely seen as they'd flashed by on the ride to Eimi-san's apartment to go and speak with someone who may actually belong in the hospital he was staying in now that he thought about it, since if he didn't belong there, his friends would quit returning him to the medics and let him stay with them. As you can see, there was a reason why it had taken three whole days for him to muster the wherewithal to overcome his ambivalence towards that particular prospect.

Grumbling about the journey that would be ahead of him and the fact that Eimi-san would panic if she caught him leaving the building while he was supposed to be watching her t.v. if she took an unexpected break from her writing, he got up, pulled on the less conspicuous looking clothing that Eimi-san had rather kindly bought for him to wear, stuffed the few Shuriken that Feisu-san and Han'nibaru-san hadn't taken after Feisu-san had gone rooting through his jacket and his standard lock picking kit into his pockets, and headed out the door. Interestingly enough, the colors of his clothing hadn't changed all that much. The dark blue trousers were a bit stiffer than he was used to, but the material was heavy enough to offer a small amount of protection in exchange, and the pockets in them were perfectly sized to hold shuriken. And the shirt...Well, when he'd seen that shade of Neon Orange that was so rare as to be virtually non-existent in his world, he'd immediately fallen in love. He had of course been forced to tie his hitai-ate to his arm the way Shikamaru did his, since it was less conspicuous than using it as a headband. As a result, his hair ended up falling into his eyes, which was rather annoying since he was forced to constantly brush it away.

His footwear had been what had given him the most trouble while he was on his way out the door however. He'd been tempted to wear his sandals, but people had stared at them while he'd been out shopping with Eimi-san, and he didn't want people staring at his feet now. Eimi-san had insisted on purchasing a new pair of shoes for him despite the fact that his sandals were still serviceable if a little small and worn since Ero-senin had planned on taking him into town to buy him some new ones next week. All of the major towns on the continent sold Shinobi sandals for those times when ninja needed a new pair and couldn't get back to their respective villages in order to get them. There weren't any guarantees that they'd be as good as the sandals they sold in the Ninja Villages, but they sold them. The new shoes Eimi-san had purchased for him had soles that were similar to the ones on his sandals, but the toes were closed like on a boot, and they had unnecessary laces that needed to be kept tied a certain way in order to keep them from wandering about and tripping you up when you least expect it when you made the mistake of stepping on them after they came loose. Not having had to tie his shoes before, he kept forgetting how he was supposed to do it and knotting the laces. When the laces were knotted, he had to spend several minutes picking the knots apart in order to get out of the shoes.

He'd knotted the laces again this time, but at the moment, he didn't really care.

As soon as he was sure he was as ready as he would ever be, he left the apartment building, going out the front door rather than heading up to the roof for more training as he was half tempted to do, and set out to speak to the only person he knew he could talk to in this world. It took a bit longer to find the hospital where Murudaku-san was staying than he expected it would, as the black and red kuruma had been traveling at a decent clip, he couldn't run as fast as he usually could despite the slight Chakra boost he'd been able to give his muscles because of the crowds that were out and about and the fact that he couldn't go roof hopping here like he could back in his own world, and because he'd been forced to backtrack a couple of times since a couple of the landmarks he'd picked out as being unique were virtually identical to other places that were nearby. He had eventually reached the hospital that Murudaku-san had been dragged inside on the morning after his arrival in this world though, and it had been after dark when he did so despite the fact that he'd set out at around lunchtime.

When he'd gotten there, he tried to figure out how to reach Murudaku-san since he couldn't just march up to the man's room because he didn't know which room the man was staying in. He had started by going in through the front door which was an entrance that was so obvious that ninja of a certain rank tended to forget about it entirely, but he'd been chased off by a number of medics, only one of whom seemed to understand what he was saying. The dark haired, dark eyed medic who looked a bit like a Uchiha that had understood him had been rather apologetic after helping chase him outside, and had informed him that he couldn't see Murudaku-san because it was after hospital visiting hours, and children under the age of fourteen weren't allowed to visit the patients without a parent or guardian present.

With that route closed off, he waited a while in order for the medics to return to their posts and assignments in the hospital and get settled back into their usual complacency before employing his stealth skills in order to make an attempt at getting a general layout of the hospital. He peered into every window he came across in order to get an idea of what the interior layout of the hospital looked like. Most of the windows which all had hinged and locked grates covering their outsides gave him glimpses into small rooms where men were going through their evening routines as they prepared to settle in for the night. Some were reading, some already sleeping, and some were rocking back and forth as they stared at the far wall, or more likely something only they could see that was in the direction of the wall that they were staring at.

In one room however, he had clearly seen Murudaku-san's profile which was almost clearly lit as the man sat before something that almost looked like a Pachinko machine. Apparently absorbed in his game, Murudoku-san hadn't registered his presence at the window. Grinning at his good fortune in finding his target so soon, he quickly checked the window grate and the window behind it for seals and traps. He had seen a wire coming in, but it looked like line for the telephone thing that Murudoku-san had in his room. Upon finding no other possible traps, he then set to picking the lock on the grate with the set of lock picks that Iruka-sensei had purchased for him before he'd set out on his three-year training trip with Ero-senin. Ninja tended to keep lock picks mostly as a curiosity, as there were a variety of ninjutsu that were useful for finessing locks without leaving obvious signs of tampering behind. He'd never had the fine Chakra control required for those jutsu however, which made this set invaluable, especially in this world where he couldn't use Chakra for the task even if he'd been able to do so without accidentally blasting the lock apart.

Eventually, after several minutes of effort, he had gotten the grate unlocked, and opened it. There was an unholy screeching sound as an alarm started going off inside the hospital. The instant the alarm went off, Murudoku-san whirled away from his game and turned to face the window. His jaw dropped when he caught sight of him. Hopping up from his stool in front of what may or may not have been some sort of Pachinko machine, Murudoku-san made his way over to the window and opened it.

"What kind of a ninja are you?" Murudoku-san asked as the medics came to unlock his door, having been alerted to the fact that there was something amiss in Murudoku-san's room by the sound of the alarm. "You're supposed to disengage the alarm **before** you open the window."

&!&!&!&

**Author's note: **In the layout of Naruto's apartment on Page 25 of the Official Fanbook that came out in 2002, a t.v. is clearly visible on the dresser across from Naruto's bed. The thing is, we never see Naruto watching it. One wonders why...

**Edited 8/5/12**


	6. Traveling With Murdock

"Screw this." Murdock muttered as he jumped out the window at the same time the orderlies got his door open, and started running, leaving the boy who had opened his window and set off the alarm to follow in his wake. The window was open, and it would be easier to just go through it and run off than it would to explain to the nice orderlies who had undoubtedly brought the needle and his special jacket with them exactly why his window was open and how he wasn't trying to make one of his infamous escape attempts this time. Besides, someone needed to supervise Naruto and bring him to someone who could properly watch him. Amy was nice and all, but it was obvious that she didn't have the skills that were necessary to keep track of the boy who had been wandering alone through an unfamiliar city for who knew how long.

The boy who had been trained to fight was better off than a normal child his age would be alone in this city, but he wasn't safe, not by a long shot. There were any number of people in Los Angeles who could and would hurt the boy for any number of reasons, especially if the boy made the mistake of setting foot in the wrong neighborhood. He needed to get the boy somewhere relatively safe, and fast. B.A. would be the best choice. Face, who hadn't had a permanent address since his days at the orphanage was undoubtedly scamming some woman into letting him stay at her place for a while at the moment, and Hannibal wasn't as good with kids as B.A. was.

That, and he'd seen the look of distrust in the boy's eyes after Hannibal had pulled that "attention" trick. He could understand why the kid wouldn't trust Hannibal all that much after that trick he'd pulled to get the boy to stop attacking him. The man had exploited a potentially fatal flaw in the kid's training. If Hannibal had meant to harm him in that moment, the kid would be dead, and the kid clearly knew it.

The orderlies eventually gave up the chase three blocks from the hospital, since he always came back, and they had better things to do at the moment. Chasing him after he escaped was more of a formality than anything at this point. If he hadn't still been dressed at the time since he wasn't quite ready to go to bed just yet, and hadn't been prepared for escape at all times, and therefore didn't have a small stash of emergency cash in his shoe, he and the kid would have been up a creek without a paddle at the moment. But he had, he was, and he did, so they weren't. Walking to B.A.'s place wouldn't have been fun, and not just because of the distance. Since B.A. couldn't exactly sign a lease because he was on the run, he had spent the last several years staying in the sort of motel that rented rooms out by the week, and it wasn't in the best part of town. He had enough for bus fare for him and the kid however, which was good.

The conversation he and Naruto had on the trip to B.A.'s was interesting as well as enlightening, and he didn't really have to force himself to pay attention to it while his mind tried to wander off as one word associated with another which associated with an idea, which linked itself to a concept which linked itself to a person, which in turn linked itself to an identity he wouldn't mind having as his own all that much. The truth was, he wasn't so much insane as exceedingly impulsive. If he wanted to be someone else, why not? He'd been someone else as part of his job before, and that had been a legitimate job with a salary that was paid by the U.S. Government. If he wanted to have a bit of fun running around doing whatever came to him at the moment why not? Usually what he was doing didn't hurt anybody except maybe himself. If he wanted to say something, why not? The worst that could happen was that he'd get hit. The team knew he wasn't really serious about a bunch of the crap he'd said over the years. If he wanted an invisible dog, he had an invisible dog, and he took care of it as a good pet owner should.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of society found the coping mechanism he'd chosen to employ to deal with what he'd gone through during his time in Vietnam to be abnormal, and he'd ended up scoring a free room and three square meals a day because of this. It was better to focus on the good things in life, because the bad ones would always bring you down, and when they did, the crash was highly unpleasant. He'd crashed back in 'Nam after one bad mission too many, and it had taken a while for him to find his way back to the sky again. If it hadn't been for his unit, he wouldn't have been able to do so. His unit was his family, and he would do everything in his power to keep it intact.

Naruto was like him in a way. He was loud, he was hyper, he was impulsive, and someone or something had done its level best to bring him crashing to the ground and keep him there. It was amazing how many words could escape that kid's mouth without him actually saying anything at all. Sure, the kid had talked almost endlessly about his home, his friends, his hobbies, and his goals and dreams for the future, but the boy had never actually said anything of substance about them. It was also obvious to him that the kid was playing the "I'm not going to think about it" game he himself sometimes played when things got to be a bit too much for him.

The way the kid had latched onto him wasn't exactly normal, but he could tell that the boy really didn't want to be alone, and did his best to be at least semi-decent company. He knew the feeling. Being alone was bad, and he tried to avoid it as often as possible himself. Like him, the boy was rather physical, which meant that he was receiving a taste of his own medicine. He'd lost count of the number of times Hannibal, Face, or B.A. had had to push him out of their personal space. It was probably rather hypocritical of him, but he generally liked to be touched only on his own terms, and right now he wasn't much in the mood for it. He took it though, because it was clear to him that the kid needed the reassurance that there was someone there for him.

"Whoa, easy there muchacho. Personal space." he said as he pushed the kid off his lap when the boy had tested his boundaries a little too much.

The kid who had allowed him to take the role of a superior for the time being had spent the entire time he was with him trying to see exactly what and how much he could get away with with him without being too obvious about it. It was clear that the kid wouldn't really follow any orders he gave unless he saw an obvious reason to do so. That was somewhat expected, since he wasn't in the boy's chain of command, and the boy only deferred to him out of courtesy due to his status as an adult, and the fact that he knew far more about this world than the boy did since it was his home.

The trust the boy had given him wasn't as solid as it looked from the outside, and could very quickly and easily be irreparably broken. He would have to be very careful not to cross the line that would do so. The fact that he hadn't been a hundred percent honest with the boy about certain things when he'd been trying to persuade the boy to go with them back in Oregon may have already crossed that line, and it was only a matter of time before the boy discovered it.

"Can we go to the library?" Naruto asked yet again.

The boy had asked him that question a number of times throughout the conversation, and he'd given the same reply each time. Amy, who had been trying to catch up on the work she'd left piling up when they'd headed out to rescue the Rodgers girl from James, hadn't found the time to bring the boy to the library, and had kept him cooped up in her apartment the last few days, which had just been asking for trouble.

"The library's closed right now, and we're going to B.A.'s. We can go to the library and the park tomorrow." he replied yet again, knowing that it wouldn't be the last time he gave this response.

"But the library's open twenty-four hours a day back in Konoha." the boy said.

"There aren't any ninja running about at all hours in Los Angeles. People here generally find the time to stop by the library at a decent hour." he replied once more.

The boy briefly scowled at his response before smiling and going back to his long and rather hilarious story about some prank he'd pulled back when he was in the academy. He had a feeling that it probably wasn't the case, but he'd found the mental image he had of the kid painting graffiti on a monument the size of Mount Rushmore in broad daylight while the local authorities were completely oblivious to what he was doing to be exceedingly entertaining.

Well, at least he now knew what he'd be doing tomorrow. If he didn't follow through on his promise, the boy would no longer like or even trust him, and may try to run off in order to get back to Oregon despite the fact that it would be dangerous to do so for a number of reasons. He liked the library, so spending the day there wouldn't be too much of a burden. Hopefully he'd be able to get a few hours of time in reading something that hadn't been pre-screened by the doctors or the nurses before someone who knew who he was called the hospital and they sent the van out after him. Some cops had been known to do that, and others didn't really give a damn as long as he wasn't causing any trouble.

B.A. had been annoyed to find him and Naruto on his doorstep at such a late hour when they'd arrived at his place. Considering the fact that it was past the bedtime of the man who had taken the old adage of Early to bed, Early to rise to heart, he knew exactly why.

"What do you want fool?" B.A. asked somewhat belligerently, holding the door to his rooms in a grip that would be white knuckled if he were a bit paler.

"We're a pair of wandering Ronin looking for a place to lay our weary heads." he said in a dramatic tone of voice.

Based on the way Naruto had blanched at the word "Ronin", it looked like he would have to nip that identity in the bud before it had a chance to fully form. A pity, it'd felt like it would have been a great deal of fun. There was a good deal of potential for the sort of chaos he needed to chase the boredom and the creeping darkness away lurking in every facet of it.

"I should just leave you out in the hall." B.A. said as he moved aside to let them in.

In another world, Jiraiya felt like crying as he made an agonizing decision. He had a meeting he couldn't miss, a meeting that could be integral to Konoha's continued safety, and he would have to leave now in order to make it in time. The thing was, over the last three days, he had made absolutely no progress in figuring out and reversing the effects of the seal Naruto had created. Vowing to be back as soon as he could, he carved a message into the trunk of a nearby tree that gave a location which Naruto should head to should he return before he did and departed.

On a bench in a rest stop in Oregon, a similar message that also carried a warning that Jiraiya should not go through the hole the seal created if at all possible had been carved into a picnic table where it would remain for nearly a decade before the table was replaced three days prior. During that decade, it inspired a number of artists and became something of a local attraction. Fortunately, it was read and received by someone who could understand it well before that decade was up.

Several hundred miles South, back in Los Angeles, Amy Allen, who had figured that the boy had gone back up to the roof again when she didn't see him watching t.v. in the living room when she left to turn in her latest article was starting to get really worried. The boy hadn't come back in when it got dark, and when she went to check the roof which was technically off-limits to residents, the boy wasn't there. The boy hadn't returned since then either. She wasn't entirely sure she should call the police though, considering where the boy had come from, and how he had gotten to her home.

Sighing, she picked up her phone. The person on the other end picked it up after the fifth ring.

She didn't get farther than "Hello, Hannibal..." before the leader of the A-Team started lecturing her over her carelessness, and the fact that it had taken her this long to call anyone after she'd realized her charge was missing.

And she'd been wondering if there was a reason why she shouldn't have children...


	7. The Park

Murdock sighed and tried to roll back over and curl up in the small nest of blankets he'd made on B.A.'s floor after he'd made sure that Naruto was comfortable on the couch the night before when Naruto woke him up at first light insisting that they go to the library NOW. Most kids, when given the opportunity to sleep in, would take advantage of it for all it was worth until their exasperated parents/guardians/babysitters/whatever finally dragged the blankets off of them and shoved them out of bed. Not Naruto however. The hyperactive kid was earlier to rise than B.A. who was getting his early morning grumbling in, having undoubtedly been awoken by Naruto's antics as well. Any hope of getting back to sleep, no matter how vain it was however, had been crushed when B.A. had told him that it was check-out time for Crazy Fools and that he'd better hit the road before he got out of the shower.

Over the years, he had been able to sort out the difference between "Things B.A. Doesn't Like" and **Things B.A. Doesn't Like**, and carefully dance along the line between the two categories, never actually truly overly annoying B.A.. More often than not, he amused and entertained the supposedly rather short-tempered man who enjoyed sabotaging his routines while pretending to be upset with him. Showing up in the middle of the night completely unannounced with a guest in tow and having said guest wake B.A. up before the sun was even up fell rather firmly into the latter category however. At this point, despite the fact that he was exhausted since he hadn't been able to sleep properly the last couple of nights because there was a new patient whose screams he had yet to get used to tuning out in a room down the hall from his, it would be better to leave, and come back later when B.A. had had a chance to calm down a bit.

Grumbling at the early wake-up call a bit himself, he made his way down to where B.A. usually parked his van to retrieve the duffel bag of belongings he kept in it for when he made his all too frequent escapes from the Hospital. He wasn't entirely sure how to deal with the fact that Naruto only had the clothes on his back at the moment, since nothing of his would fit the kid, but that particular problem could hold for another day since the boy wasn't too dirty. They could always go to Amy's apartment and pick up whatever belongings the kid had acquired during the few short days he'd been here later if they absolutely had to. It wasn't like the woman who had undoubtedly called the police when she realized the boy was missing had kicked the kid out of her apartment. Going there however would be a bit troublesome because he'd then have to answer a number of awkward questions before he was shipped back to the hospital.

Ten minutes after he'd retrieved his belongings from the van, he was dressed for the day, and he and Naruto were out the door and getting their breakfast off of a snack truck down the street since he had decided it unwise to further impose on B.A.'s hospitality at the moment. After breakfast was purchased, he herded the overly energetic boy onto a bus that would take them to a park somewhere in one of the reasonably nice neighborhoods to kill time until the library opened at 10. He had promised the boy that he would take him to a park as well as the library today after all, and the only thing within walking distance of the library that could be considered a park was that concrete eyesore that had been going downhill since World War Two.

He knew that bringing the kid to the Main Branch library where most of the material was in English, rather than bringing the boy to the Chinatown or Little Tokyo branches where there would be a great deal more books in a language Naruto could read was sneaky of him, but he wanted to give the boy motivation to learn English so he could better manage on his own in this world. Having most of the books the boy wanted to read be unavailable to him because of a language barrier would give the boy that motivation.

When the bus let them out near a park that he'd been to a couple of times before and found to be reasonably safe, he found that it wasn't abandoned as such a place usually was at this hour on a weekday. He knew it was a weekday because he'd double-checked the date B.A.'s calendar to make sure he hadn't lost a day, since it was rather easy to lose track of the date at the Hospital where one day blends into the next if you weren't paying attention. Since it wasn't a holiday, one of the local schools must have been having a teacher conference or training day that day. The boy was scowling when they reached the park, but, that scowl soon eased a bit, and that smile which seemed to be both genuine and a mask at the same time reappeared like the sun coming out of the clouds by the time they reached the small tree-shaded playground.

Naruto hadn't been too happy to be herded to a park when all he wanted to do, which had been all he'd wanted to do practically since the first moment he had arrived in this strange city was head to the library so he could figure out what had gone wrong with the seal he'd made and fix it. The park was admittedly rather nice, but it wasn't where he wanted to be at the moment, and he could tell that Murudaku-san knew it.

His near burning desire to visit the library was somewhat ironic considering the fact that he rarely visited the library back home, usually preferring to buy his books and scrolls outright or, more commonly, scrounging them from somewhere shortly before they were thrown out. He'd never been actively chased out of the Konoha library during his infrequent visits nor had he been forbidden from entering it in the first place, but he'd found the atmosphere there to be cold and unwelcoming, and, worst of all, he was expected to remain still and silent while he was there so as not to disturb the other people, which was a near impossibility for him most of the time. He had too much energy, and if he didn't let it out, he got all twitchy until he did.

The relatively small patch of green that was dotted here and there with trees with a playground set up at one end which looked very much like a couple of the parks back in Konoha, complete with swings, a slide, and a jungle gym looked reasonably nice, but he'd always had mixed feelings about parks. Part of the reason for this was the rejection he constantly suffered when he went to the ones that were near his apartment and near the Academy, especially when parents were around to call their kids away before they agreed to play with him. Another part of the reason for this was the feeling that he was missing something, something important, as he watched the parents play with their children, or walk them home at the end of the day. Aside from the few and far between occasions where he arrived with Chouji, Shikamaru, and Kiba or a combination of the three, he himself almost always arrived alone, and left alone when he went to the park.

During their travels together, Ero-senin almost never took him to the park, especially not after that incident where the woman the lecherous old drunk who also happened to be one of the most skilled ninja on the continent and a master spy despite his distinct appearance was trying to hook up with mistakenly thought that Ero-senin was his grandfather, and made a comment along those lines. The man had shown him he cared for him in a million other small ways though, such as breaking his popsicle in half and sharing it with him when he got them despite the fact that nobody would blame him if he ate the whole thing by himself.

Murudaku-san seemed nice enough, but it was entirely possible that the reason the man had brought him here was because man was trying to distract him. He didn't doubt the existence of a library in this city. In a city this size, it would be insane for there to not be one. What he doubted was whether or not the library would live up to what he'd been led to expect, and the man's intentions of bringing him there. The man seemed to be stalling for some reason. It was entirely possible that that reason he was stalling was because the library actually wasn't open for the day like he claimed, but he didn't understand why that would be. From what he'd heard, Librarians were generally the sort who almost religiously followed the Shinobi virtues, and were usually up and at their posts before the sun. Those that worked the day shift were at least, and the ones on the night shift were always up well before full dark according to what he'd heard.

This city wasn't Konoha however, and as Murudaku-san had pointed out, since almost everyone here was a civilian, businesses here tended to keep civilian hours. That meant that there were a rare few places in the city that were open at sunrise or stayed open all hours, and those were usually small markets which were similar to the 24 hour Shinobi Marts, except for the fact that they never sold weapons.

The fact that he couldn't see or feel any hostile glares from the parents who were watching as their children played when he and Murudaku-san entered the park firmly drove home the fact that he wasn't at home and that things were different here. Deciding that he may as well enjoy the park a bit while he was here, he made a beeline for the swings. That was at least something he could enjoy by himself without the fear of rejection he might suffer if he tried playing with one of the few kids who were occupying the playground. Despite the fact that nobody here knew him, he would still be the odd one out because he couldn't understand the local language. He had a tendency to sit on the swing that was tied to a tree outside of the Academy when he was depressed, but the swings in the park were a slightly different matter. With the swings in the Konoha parks, he could pretend that he was playing with the other children and that he was actually having fun until he lost track of what was going on and he really did have some fun despite other people's best efforts at bringing him down.

He tensed up slightly when Murudaku-san came up behind him when he sat down on the middle swing in the rather large swingset. Rather than trying to do something foolish and potentially suicidal considering the fact that he was armed and Murudaku-san wasn't, the man gripped the chains of the swing he was sitting on, and pulled the swing back. Before he could even figure out why the man was doing this, the man pushed on his back, forcing the swing forward. When the swing came back to where Murudaku-san was standing, he pushed on his back again to make the swing move forward again. It took a couple of repeats of this strange behavior for him to realize exactly what was going on because it hadn't happened in years. Aside from when the Old Man used to when he was little, nobody pushed him on the swings.

He tentatively added Murudaku-san's name to his list of precious people then and there, hoping and praying that he didn't turn out to be like Mizuki.


	8. The Library

Naruto frowned slightly as he followed Murudaku into the library which the man had taken him to as promised. The somewhat aged building that fairly reeked of dust, aging paper, and book mold hadn't quite been what he'd been led to expect. For one, the area that Murudaku had led him to seemed to contain just about as many books as Konoha's library did which was amazingly little for a place that supposedly contained all of this strange world's knowledge. This strange world where Technology seemed to rule the day in unimaginable ways, as people who'd apparently been born in a place where one could have Chakra and never use it found ways around the deficiency, constantly inventing new ways of doing things. Sure, his own world had televisions, refrigerators, radios and the like, but it also didn't have "cars" and "airplanes" and several other small gadgets whose uses completely eluded him. What the hell was a Walkman for instance?

"Most of the library's collection is in the internal stacks." Murudaku said as he led him to a massive filing cabinet that was full of small drawers, having noticed his frown and surmised the most likely cause of it.

Murudaku, who was able to read the local language, sifted through the card catalogue that held the information on every scrap of paper, film, or "microfiche" that the library contained, muttering phrases like "Maybe Eastern Philosophy?" and "Definitely a book on the alphabet." as he did so. After the man had gathered a sizable stack of cards, he acquired a number of request slips and started filling them out. After all of the forms had been filled out, he brought the stack of them to one of the librarians who frowned at the number of books he was requesting.

The librarians in this place weren't quite what he was used to in his limited experience with the library back home. They were civilians for one, soft civilians who had likely never seen a kunai or shuriken or whatever passed for a common weapon in this strange world in their entire lives, and for two, they didn't glare at him too badly when he'd forgotten himself as he'd grown exceedingly impatient after he'd been forced to wait forever for the librarian who'd left with the request slips Murudaku had handed over to return with some books. Eventually, the aged female librarian who reminded him a little bit of the old lady who he occasionally saw hanging out with the Old Man returned with a pile of books however, and Murudaku led him over to a reading table.

When he grabbed the slimmest volume he could find that didn't strangely enough look like it was a book for babies and opened it, he immediately realized that there was a problem, and a big one at that. The book and all the ones under it including the baby books were all in that "Eigo" language that just about everybody in this land spoke. There was some familiar writing on some of the pictures in the larger books, but since he sucked balls at reading Kanji, he could only understand one or two words of what it said. Based on Murudaku's expression, the man had fully expected this to be the case.

"You tricked me!" he yelled at the man he'd thought he could trust until he'd just proven otherwise.

"No I didn't." Murudaku replied. "I brought you here as promised. It's not my fault that the books here don't magically make themselves understandable to everyone who wants to read them. You're staying in a land where most people speak English, and therefore should expect most of the books to be in the same language. This branch of the library does have literature in other languages, but the Japanese collection is small enough to be virtually non-existant."

He noticed the word "branch". It wasn't entirely as alien to him as it would be to the average Konoha citizen where the Shinobi library and the Civilian library was all you got, and if they didn't have a certain book or scroll and the local bookstores didn't have it since it was out of print, you were SOL. Out in the wider Fire country as a whole, each town had at least some small collection of books that were available to the public, but rather than being its own library, each town's book collection was a part of the Fire Daimyo's library which he has graciously lent to the people. Considering its size, and the reputed size of the collection that was in the internal stacks where only the librarians were allowed to go, this place was likely like the main collection in the Capitol, and it was entirely possible that there was a smaller collection of books tucked away in an isolated corner of the city that consisted entirely of books that were in a language he could understand.

The question was did Murudaku know about this collection should it exist, and lead him here for his own perverse entertainment, or did he not know and lead him here because it was the one place he was familiar with? Murudaku could speak his language, and very well at that, but it was apparent that it wasn't the man's first language, or a language he communicated in very often considering how rusty he'd been when they'd first spoken with each-other. Being a native Eigo speaker, it was more than likely that what he would spend his downtime reading would be in the same.

Since the man had pushed him on the swings like the Old Man had done for him when he was little, a part of him wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but then again, he'd trusted Mizuki and Kabuto, and look where that had gotten him. If this man was untrustworthy however, that would mean that his friends were most likely untrustworthy as well, and if they were untrustworthy, that would mean that he was all alone in this world with no money, and little to no knowledge of the local language, and no way of knowing who would or wouldn't help him. With Murdaku and his friends however, he had food and shelter which made him better off now, though it begged the question of whether or not he'd be better off in the long run, considering the number of things that they might want in return.

There were many things a civilian would want to use a trained ninja for, even one who couldn't use Chakra. Even though he hadn't had call to use such skills, he had been trained in assassination in the Academy, and had gotten a pretty good score when he'd run through the simulation a month before he graduated. It was possible that these people would want him to do such side work, or something that was even messier or even more illegal, like what Zabuza and Haku had been hired to do for Gato which went well beyond killing Tazuna.

* * *

"Something wrong?" Murdock asked the boy who had suddenly and rather uncharacteristically gone silent after his initial outburst.

The boy's silence worried him. The boy was normally rather loud when there were people about, and would immediately let you know whether something was going right or going wrong. The kid had nearly deafened him with his whoops as he'd played in the park earlier, and damn near talked his ear off on the way to B.A.'s, on the way to the park, and on the way here. This guarded silence as the kid scruitinized him and seemed to weigh his options frankly scared the hell out of him. It was entirely possible that thanks to the little trick he'd pulled in order to motivate the boy to learn English in case he was never able to return home, the kid could have decided that he was a threat, and was preparing to deal with him accordingly, and having been in a war, he knew full well what a soldier no matter the age would do to an enemy that he has determined to be an immediate threat to his health and welbeing.

"Why here?" the blond boy with the oddly tattooed cheeks asked.

He sighed and decided to tell the boy the truth before he lost his trust forever. Who knew what would happen if that happened, and not just the part with him ending up dead in an alley somewhere.

"I wanted you to start learning English Muchacho, and I knew that you wouldn't if I just took you to the Little Tokyo branch and turned you loose amongst the stacks." he replied.

"So, that's what these are for?" the boy asked, holding up the brightly colored picture books that he'd requested along with the volumes on Eastern philosophy, religion, and medicine.

Based on the way the boy was scowling, he had clearly not appreciated the gesture.

This trip was a bust, though he should have expected it considering the trick he'd just pulled, and the fact that the kid sitting across from him wasn't an ordinary child no matter how much he looked like one. The kid had seen battle, and he'd seen death, and he knew from experience that you don't come back from something like that happy, whole, and trusting that the world and just about everything in it is safe.

"Let's get you a library card and get these checked out." he said as he picked up the picture books since it was apparent that the other books wouldn't really be good for much other than a goal for the child to shoot for, seeing as he himself didn't entirely know what he should be looking for.

The librarian would probably want to strangle him when he handed the other books over considering the number of isolated corners in the stacks that she'd probably had to go rooting through in order to get them for him.


	9. New Digs

When Murdock and Naruto left the library Hannibal was waiting for them outside. There was a bag slung over his shoulder, and from the looks of it it was packed with clothes.

"Just the two people I wanted to see." Hannibal said once they'd spotted him.

Naruto looked up at Hannibal with a defiant and untrusting expression, but that was only to be expected because of the stunt he had pulled. The boy may have seemingly given his trust easily, but that wasn't the case, and the instant you did anything to make him mistrust you, you were out. Murdock was now skating on some seriously thin ice with the boy due to that whole library stunt, and all it would take would be Naruto deciding that he and the others might've tricked him into coming to L.A. to cause the boy to go haring off for parts unknown.

"Murdock, you mind telling the boy that he isn't going back to Amy's?" Hannibal said once he'd reached the other man.

Murdock complied with his request and there was a bit of back and forth between the boy and the man during which the boy became increasingly displeased. The boy cast several mistrusting looks in his direction, and, surprisingly to Hannibal, a number of the same at Murdock whom he'd seemed to trust and get along with if B.A.'s story had been any indication. Eventually, the two stopped talking, indicating that the conversation was over.

Hannibal knew the boy needed more supervision than Amy could provide, as the recent incident that had led to here had clearly illustrated. The boy had been rather bored at Amy's where he'd been practically trapped in the apartment with nothing to do while she was away at work, and as they say idle hands do the devil's work. An old friend of his from Vietnam whom he'd owed a great deal had recently opened a restaurant in Chinatown that was called the Golden Pagoda. Sam would be in need of help which would keep the boy busy, and likely would keep the boy in line better than he could since the boy didn't trust him after their rather inauspicious meeting.

He couldn't ask B.A. to watch the boy because besides the fact that he didn't have room for long-term guests, a small white boy living with a large black man who dressed like he was on the wrong side of the law wouldn't compute in most people's minds, and B.A. didn't need the extra scrutiny that the boy's presence would bring. Murdock was out for obvious reasons. Face was out because he was basically a transient with only his car to his name and even that was questionable. He was out both because he couldn't drag the kid to the movie set with him when he had work, and because the boy didn't trust him. That was of course without bringing their other work which was much too dangerous for the boy to get involved in into the equation.

Since none of them could keep the boy, that meant that he'd been forced to sort through his contacts, and Sam lived in an area that the boy would probably be more familiar with and more comfortable in despite his outward appearances. Every time that kid opened his mouth, he proved that despite his blond hair, his sparkling blue eyes, and his rosy little tattooed cheeks he wasn't as American as baseball and apple pie. Little Tokyo would be a better fit considering, but he didn't know anyone in Little Tokyo that he might trust the boy with.

The boy rather reluctantly followed him and Murdock to the curb where the taxi he'd called since B.A. needed the van today was waiting. The boy was rather hesitant to get inside the cab with them however. He did get in eventually though, since he had nothing else to do and his only other option was to head to Oregon and wait for something that might never happen.

"Where are we going?" the boy asked in the language the prevented him from blending in with his surroundings as the cab pulled away from the curb.

"We already told you muchacho, Hannibal's found you a place to stay." Murdock replied in the same.

"But, where is it?" the boy asked.

"Well, it's..." Murdock started in Japanese before turning to him and saying "Hey Hannibal, where are we going?" in English.

"The Golden Pagoda." he replied.

"There? You're taking him there?!" Murdock exclaimed.

"Yes. Is there a problem?" he replied.

"No, no problem aside from the fact that he's white, and as far as they're going to be concerned, he's Japanese. It'd be like moving B.A. into an all-white neighborhood. An all-white neighborhood in a foreign country." Murdock said.

"It was the best I could do on short notice." he replied.

In all honesty, it was the best he could do on short notice since Mr. Lee would've had his guts for garters if he'd tried leaving him at the laundry with him. Mr. Lee may have found his dressing up like a stereotypical movie version of a Chinaman and speaking like a fortune cookie for his prospective customers amusing because he had a twisted sense of humor that worked that way, but he barely tolerated him and wouldn't want another interloper hanging about, even one that was willing to work.

Throughout most of the trip to the Golden Pagoda which he was beginning to have second thoughts about, the boy contented himself with looking out the window, though he gave a bit of a groan when they reached Chinatown and said "It's all in Kanji". Eventually, the cab pulled up to the restaurant, and all of them got out and went inside where the man who would hopefully be looking after Naruto until either he could find something better or a portal to the boy's world opened was waiting.

* * *

Sam Yeng stared at the boy that Hannibal had brought him and asked him to look after. With his light hair and bright blue eyes, he could almost be Hannibal's son. There was something about his features though that was slightly...off. The dark lines running across his cheeks like whiskers were odd, but that wasn't quite it. It was almost as if...

The boy opened his mouth and started talking in rapid-fire Japanese as he explored the restaurant.

Almost as if the boy were part Asian. But, he'd never encountered a blond haired, blue-eyed, Eurasian child before. Though, this one looked more like he was maybe a quarter or an eighth Japanese at the most.

"Go to Sun in the kitchen boy, I need to talk to Hannibal." he said to the boy in English since he wasn't all that familiar with Japanese.

The boy paused in his conversation with Hannibal's insane friend and looked at him in confusion. He repeated his order to the boy who was probably rude and disobedient like most teenagers tended to be on top of everything else.

"Where kitchen?" the boy asked after thinking it over for a while.

Almost growling at the kid who was undoubtedly making fun of him, he pointed towards the back. He muttered darkly after the retreating figure of the child that Hannibal had asked him to look after even though it was Hannibal who owed him a favor not the other way around.

"Did I mention that Naruto doesn't speak English?" Hannibal said once he'd turned to talk to the man who'd called him up out of the blue and asked him to look after a kid who'd found himself in a foreign country without a home or a family and couldn't be placed in the system for safety reasons. After that little sob story Hannibal had given him, he'd found himself telling the man to bring the kid down, and he'd see what he could do.

"Exactly what did you bring into my restaurant?" he asked.

"We're not entirely sure." Hannibal replied honestly for once. "We found him up in Oregon after that whole mess with the Reverend James. The only language he speaks is Japanese, and an odd dialect of it at that. I wouldn't recommend yelling at him or moving too quickly around him though, whoever's been raising him had him trained."

"And you brought him here?!" he replied.

"It's only temporary until we can find a better solution." Hannibal replied.

"Find one now, it's not happening." he said.

"Father!" his daughter who'd just come from the kitchen exclaimed.

He didn't know quite how it had happened, but by the end of it after Hannibal and his daughter who'd found the Naruto boy to be adorable and come to like him in the few minutes she'd known him had ganged up on him, he'd found himself welcoming a child who'd been trained to kill with whom he could barely communicate into his home.


	10. Trouble or Something Very Like It

Sam smiled as he watched Naruto come out of the back with several plates balanced on his arms. In the time that the Uzumaki child had been there, he'd grown rather fond of the child that Hannibal had dropped into his lap. Rather than being a hindrance, he'd been an immense help despite the communication issues which were easing somewhat, and his quick reflexes and occasional acrobatics had entertained the customers. The people in the neighborhood had begun to get used to him, and didn't stare at him as much as they had in the beginning.

The boy had been enough of an oddity that the police had come around asking about the child once, and he'd told them a story about the child being the son of his business partner who'd been raised in Asia, and dragged out a photograph of Hannibal as proof. With Hannibal's pale hair and blue eyes, he almost looked like he could be the boy's father, so the police didn't really question the story further, though they did question the fact that the boy was not in school. After that, he'd been forced to spin a tale about the boy having been raised by his half-Japanese mother, and how he would soon be returning to Japan where he would be going back to school after his visit to his father was over. Eventually, after trying to question the boy and only getting either looks of blank incomprehension or one or two word replies in return, the police left.

While the Uzumaki boy was here, he was ostensibly supposed to be keeping the boy busy and therefore out of trouble, acclimating him to an environment that he was marginally familiar with in order to make acclimating him to American society as a whole easier, and only teaching the boy English which he should supposedly do better than Hannibal and his friends since like the boy English wasn't his first language and therefore he would have a better way of learning it than absorption since birth. He had indeed been keeping the child busy, and he had been helping him acclimate to the neighborhood, but as for English...

English was only one of three languages that the boy was picking up as he learned to communicate with those around him. Sure, he'd tried to teach the boy only English in order to not confuse him as Hannibal had wanted, but things had sort of snowballed. The Vietnamese had been a natural offshoot of the fact that that was the language he and his daughter Sun normally spoke at home. As for the Chinese, he hadn't exactly meant to start teaching the Uzumaki child Chinese, it had just sort of happened when he'd sent the boy out for groceries. He'd started off with the names of foods that the old man who ran the market near their home would understand and hand him, and things had taken off from there as the boy had been curious about the Chinese equivalents of the few Kanji he knew.

There were times when it was almost impossible for him to believe that the half-literate child who was now starting to chatter away in four different languages instead of one was a trained killer as Hannibal had claimed. Then, the boy would do something that would have him warily watching the child for the rest of the day, and sometimes even staying awake at night just in case. The fact that the Uzumaki practiced some sort of Martial Art wasn't that unusual seeing as there were a sizable number of dojos and training halls in the city, many of which trained anyone. The boy's level of skill, and the way he moved when he practiced was however. Then, there had been the incident with the throwing stars.

He really shouldn't have tried testing the boy in order to see if Hannibal was having him on and had dumped a rabid ninja fan on his doorstep...

He'd taken the kid to Little Tokyo and brought him to a store that sold fake Samurai swords and the like to tourists after a trip to the Little Tokyo branch of the library which the boy had begged him for more than once. After initially looking excited and chattering away in his admixture of Japanese, English, Vietnamese and Chinese which was almost entirely Japanese at that point, the boy had started seriously examining the weapons with the eye of someone who knew what quality was, and that what was on display wasn't it. The shopkeeper had not been too happy with the questions the boy had started asking after rejecting several sets of shiny shuriken which he'd examined, shuriken which the child had thrown with deadly accuracy before complaining about the balance and the quality of the materials. With him being the responsible adult in the situation, the shopkeeper had turned to him for answers, and he'd been forced to spin a tale of some cult leader up in Oregon having raised the boy to be a ninja assassin on the spot.

When they'd gotten home empty-handed after the shopkeeper who'd given the Uzumaki boy a pitying look had firmly told them to leave, Naruto had thanked him for taking him to the shop and holed himself up in the small room that had formerly belonged to Sun who was now sleeping in the living-room. Less than a minute later, as he was trying to sort things out in his mind and process what had happened that day, he'd heard the sound of a knife grinding against a whetstone. Following the sound to the Uzumaki boy's room, he'd soon discovered exactly where all of his small kitchen knives had started disappearing to and what had happened to his old cork notice board which he'd recently replaced. Remembering Hannibal's warning, he'd just barely restrained his impulse to yell at the boy for stealing.

After that, he'd done his best to keep the boy constantly busy so there were no "incidents". Considering how much the local kids picked on the boy when he was out running errands for him, he was frankly surprised that there hadn't been. Fortunately, he wasn't the only one keeping an eye on the boy and keeping him in line. When they weren't busy with their other duties, either Face, B.A. or Murdock would come in and check up on the boy, likely at Hannibal's behest. The few times Murdock the madman had come, he'd tried to teach the boy how to read and write in English. The fact that the boy could barely read and write in his own language probably didn't help matters any.

* * *

The head of the Lung Chin which was moving into the neighborhood since the local Tongs had been too weak to stop them looked around the Golden Pagoda restaurant appraisingly as he took his seat. He was looking to expand certain businesses in the area, and it was a good idea to see for himself what the local businesses would be able to pay for protection since it wouldn't do to squeeze them out of business entirely and dry up that stream of income. The Golden Pagoda was reasonably well off, seemed popular enough, and looked like his organization might be able to draw in about a thousand dollars a week from it.

The small blond waiter who'd brought him his tea rather strangely did not speak with the flat accent that was common to the natives of California, but instead spoke in an accent which had started bringing up some unpleasant memories from his youth. If he didn't know any better, he would've sworn that the child was Japanese. Watching the boy drift around the restaurant filling orders and refilling drinks, he noticed that there was something off in the way the boy moved and the way he carried himself. It was almost as if...

Resolving to look into the child at a later date in case he was trouble, he decided to enjoy his meal as it would likely be the only time he'd be welcome in the Golden Pagoda, especially after he and his men fully moved into the neighborhood.

* * *

Naruto frowned as he looked at the old man who'd just received his order. While virtually everyone who ate at the Golden Pagoda registered as a civilian or as good as to him, there was something about the old man he'd just served that reminded him of the Old Man Hokage, and not in a nice way, but more in the I'm the boss and you must obey me way. Once or twice he'd been before the Old Man when he wasn't smiling or trying to hide a smile, and that was an experience he did not care to repeat. The fact that there was something about that old man who was digging into his food that reminded him of Gato didn't help matters either as far as he was concerned.

He'd be keeping watch for trouble. Despite being rather alien in many ways, the neighborhood he was in was very much like Konoha in some ways as well. It had its good points and its bad points and the people who stared and whispered about him behind his back, though not as maliciously as in Konoha. Like Konoha, there was also a criminal underground that clandestinely operated outside the eyes of the law such as it was.

Like most ninja, he didn't see a problem with gambling, and drug usage was more the decision of the user though he personally didn't ever plan on using. Both of those sometimes along with prostitution were often looked down upon very seriously by civilians and the more traditional shinobi who almost religiously refrained from the Shinobi Vices. Here, it seemed both gambling and drugs as well as prostitution which varied from being completely legal, semi-legal, or illegal depending on the location back home were completely in the purview of the local version of the Yakuza rather than partially controlled by the Yakuza or whatever the hell they called it here, and partially controlled by local governments, or not controlled at all as the case may be.

Unfortunately, because of this and the fact that there weren't ninja around to help maintain the law when the municipal police were overwhelmed, things were naturally a bit more violent than they were back home. He may not have a full grasp on the local languages of which there were several, but he wasn't entirely stupid, had eyes to see, and having grown up in a neighborhood that wasn't in the best part of town, he knew what to look for even without his training. That, and having seen the news a few times back home, he knew what it looked like when a news anchor was reporting a murder even if he couldn't understand all of the words.

That Gatoish look that old man who had just waved him away when he'd offered him a refill on his tea had marked him down as a potential crime boss as far as he was concerned, and crime bosses almost invariably meant trouble when they had that air about them. Trouble that neither he nor the Yengs needed.


End file.
